J.A. Jance is the New York Times bestselling author of both the J. P. Beaumont series and the Joanna Brady Series. She has written 40 novels and she has more than 10 million copies of her books in print. Visit her Web site: JAJance.com.

Window On My World

I think a lot of people regards writer as . . . well . . . oddballs. And maybe they’re right. Many of them seem to think the job of writing is best done in attic kinds of places, shivering from the cold, and huddled next to a too small coal burning fire. Or perhaps they think of someone turning out books in an opulent office, complete with walls of book shelves, gorgeous artwork and leather chairs.

We actually have an office like that in our house. It belongs to my husband. He handles the business end of our business. I like to say I write the books; he writes the checks, Believe me, on that score, it takes two to Tango. If I had to do his job and my job, neither one would get done.

So when people come into the house and find out that their first assumption is wrong, that the office isn’t mine, then they wonder where I really work. Because this blog offers a window on this particular writer’s life, I’m going to tell you. But first, as is my habit in blog creation, a small digression.

I grew up in a family of seven children. This was back in the old days. We ate meals at home around the kitchen table–a very long kitchen table with three on each side, two on the end, and one in a high chair. Both before we set the table and after the table was cleared, that’s where we did homework–on the kitchen table. It was always busy in the kitchen. Our mother was cooking; people were talking; people were singing–that almost always happened while dishes were being done.

Fortunately I learned to cope with all the extra noise. I did my homework in spite of it or maybe even because of it. When I went to the University of Arizona and moved into Pima Hall, each girl had a desk in the various rooms, but that was too quiet for me. So I often chose to study in the dorm’s dining room with people coming and going around me. That was what I was used to.

For a time after Bill and I married, I worked in the living room of his house in Bellevue–one brimming with kids and dogs and people coming and going. Eventually though, the kids grew up and went off to school or life or whatever, and suddenly the house was TOO QUIET. I tried listening to the radio. Easy Listening didn’t work. Even when there were no lyrics being sung, the lyrics were in my head, and that got in the way of writing my own words. Thus my late-blooming affection for classical music. After a childhood of listening to KSUN which was long on Gentleman Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline and short on Mozart, I suddenly found myself listening to KING-FM where there generally are no lyrics. And quiet was once again banished so I could work.

Which brings me to where I work now. Not in the attic. And not in the office, either. I work in the family room with people coming and going. My commute is the twelve steps it takes to get from the coffee machine to my chair.

There are four matching white leather chairs lined up in the family room. Mine is the one on the far left. The next one belongs to Bella and her Furrcedes dog bed. (Yes, it looks like a little Mercedes convertible). She spends most of the day here beside me, sleeping with her nose tucked into the roll bars. (Did I tell you she’s very cute?) Her bed shares part of the hassock that Bill uses, because his is the next chair. The one on the end belongs to Daphne, our 13.5 year-old golden retriever.

And this is where I work, laptop in lap, hour after hour, day after day. My chair is next to the wall with a gas burning log fireplace in it–something we really treasured a few years ago when the lights went out for several days and we didn’t have a generator. (We do now!) So I like the fireplace in the wall and being able to turn it on, but what I really love is what’s ON the wall.

This year my son and daughter-in-law had the covers of each of my books copied and blown up to a standard size. They’re all framed with simple black mat metal frames, and they’re all hanging there, not in any particular order. That means people may have to look for a while in order to find a specific book, but with all of them gathered in one place it’s easy to see that it IS a body of work. When I look at the covers I remember something that inspired a certain book or something that was happening in our lives when I wrote it or when I was doing a particular book tour.

This week when one my publishers was putting together catalogue copy for one of next year’s books, I had them add up the number of books in print–21,500,000. That’s a lot of books. Not bad for a girl.

And I’m sure the guy who didn’t let me into his Creative Writing class really is spinning in his grave.